Page 6

Chapter Five

Jax

S nap.

I sighed, looking over the open lands, my feet dangling over the edge of the cliff face, heels rubbing against the white limestone chalk. My hands tugged at the tufts of grass blowing over the sides, fearless in the rippling breeze.

Crunch.

I took off my Stetson, holding it on my lap as the sun’s heat cooled and the autumn evening set in.

Crack.

I sighed.

“Even Australia can hear you, Veronica.”

I didn’t even need to turn to look over my shoulder to know the wild child had stumbled out of the shrubs, twigs and sticks no doubt sticking out of her hair, mud all over her jeans and shirt.

“You know I don’t like it when you call me that,” Ronnie grumbled, her footsteps coming closer to me. They slowed as she neared the edge, and I looked up the small distance to her face as she gave the steep edge a tentative look.

“Your mother wouldn’t like to hear you say that,” I tutted. “It was your Grammy’s name after all.”

“Grammy’s old. So’s her name.” Ronnie sank down in the grass behind me, her knees pressed into my arm as if I were a shield to protect her from the edge.

I shook my head at her. This girl….

The little smirk on my lips died, however, as I looked out over the open plains, the land that would all belong to me one day. My heritage. My burden.

Not even a second of silence passed before I felt her fingers tug on the sleeve of my shirt. “Why you lookin’ like that?”

“Like what?”

“You’re all wrinkly here.” Ronnie poked at my forehead, the creases under her fingertip ridged under the light pressure.

I reached up and caught her little hand, my own palm swallowing her thin, tanned fingers, looking at the short stubby nails and dirt beneath them. “You’re not going to be attracting any men with these kinds of hands, Ronnie.”

The little green eyes frowned for just a moment, and we both knew my conversation changer was a blatant attempt to drive her away from that topic. She opened her mouth, and I knew I hadn’t gotten away with it.

“I don’t need to attract any other men…,” Ronnie grumbled, gaze cast to the ground.

I couldn’t help the surprise on my face as I saw her look away, the lightest little blush on her face. She went along with it….

I smiled, feeling that crease between my eyes relax for the first time this evening. My grip tightened on her small palm as I tugged it to me.

“Why, little miss Ronnie,” I drawled. “Is there a fella you have your eye on?”

That little blush turned tomato red as she turned to look me directly in the eye. “No!”

She tugged on her arm, but I only held tighter as she fought against me. “Don’t tease me, Jackson!” she snapped, pushing at my lower back with flailing limbs.

“When you show me a face like that, Ronnie, you know I can’t help myself.”

Ronnie paused, as I admired the little face that was lit up even to her ears and she turned shyly away from me.

This little rebel acting shy?

How cute.

“You wanna tell me his name?”

“Never!” she squeaked, and while I had been distracted, a hard pinch came at my side, and damn if I didn’t drop her like fire.

“Ronnie!” I hissed as the girl scrambled to her feet and launched herself back into the shrubs.

I jumped to my feet.

“You’re gonna regret that!” I bellowed, grabbing my hat and jumping to my feet.

“You’ll have to catch me first,” she squealed through the loud crunching and snapping of twigs.

Trust me. I plan to.

* * *

“T his thing is a piece of shit,” Hunter growled from beneath the body of Ronnie’s truck. He was clanking away on the underside while I manned the tools on the rolling stool.

“Probably because it’s older than a dinosaur.” My hand was fiddling with the key to the archaic thing. “It was her mom’s car. Ronnie inherited it when she turned sixteen and has been replacing the broken parts for the last ten years.”

Hunter snorted, his boots pushing him a little further under until he completely disappeared underneath.

He worked in silence as I surveyed the garage Hunter recently purchased. It wasn’t new, that was for sure. The cracked walls, plastered in dust, oil, and paint showed the years of work that had gone into it. There was a slight dent in the metal hangers; one worked, and the other didn’t. The two bays allowed access to concrete slabs with a couple old pieces you’d expect to find a mechanics shop, car lift in need of new electrical wiring, blow torch, tire changer, tool boxes, etc. He was still missing about a dozen other things before this place got operational, but it was a place to start.

In my perusing, I hadn’t noticed Hunter wheel himself back out from under the truck. Not until I felt the steel-capped boot kicking me in the shin.

“Shit, you bastard!” I hissed, running my leg. “That hurt!”

“I said spanner ten fucking times,” he grunted back, green eyes glaring. His face was more of a frown than the pissed-off snarl that took resident on his face most days of the week. I swear this dude was more laid-back, but with his youngest daughter’s sleeping patterns still not fixed, he wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, and I decided not to poke the huge bastard with a stick.

Which wasn’t like me.

“My bad.” I picked out the spanner and slapping it into his hand. He didn’t flinch, his hand taking the extra weight with ease.

“This girl has really riled you up,” Hunter observed, scooting back under the car.

“Don’t go there with me, Hunter,” I replied, not wanting to talk about it. I’d been unsettled since Ronnie arrived and ever since she tried talking to me last night, I felt the urge to run hard and fast in the opposite direction.

“Fine, but be careful what you do with her. The blowout from Ash and her father hasn’t blown over yet. We’ve still got rogue Black Jacks to keep an eye out for.”

It had been eight months since we’d gone to war with one of the evilest motherfuckers in Europe. All over Anna’s best friend who had fled the second she was safe, leaving us to deal with the aftermath. She might not have been an enemy of the club, but she wasn’t welcome as far as I was concerned.

The real enemy of the club was her father, and an underground kingpin of Europe. He had once used a bad group of Russian mercenaries on his payroll to cause us some trouble. Even going so far as to attack Anna. After we were done with them, the few that survived ended up scattered across the country. Even so, we stayed wary; a scorned man could hold a grudge for a long while, and we guessed we hadn’t seen the end of them yet.

“She won’t be here long,” I replied, kicking my foot against the concrete and spinning on the rusty stool until I came to a stop next to the cooler. At the pop of the lid, I heard Hunter’s tired sigh as he came rolling back out from under the car.

He sat up, cranked his neck, and then steadily rose the six feet up onto his feet.

I passed him a beer, and he twisted off the lid with ease. I took my own off, watching him take a mouthful of the cold Corona while I tipped mine back and chugged it until my air ran out.

Hunter watched me idly from where he sat. “You really think she’s going to be fixed that quickly?”

I glanced at his huge figure before turning back to my empty beer. I reached down and took another out from the cooler, popping off the lid. “Ronnie’s problems aren’t mine to fix.”

“I was talking about the horse.”

I froze, beer to my lips and for a second, the smell of it didn’t taste as nice as I expect it to. “Shit,” I growled, setting the beer on the floor next to my feet. I looked down to my arm and the red, raw skin that was beginning to heal over it. The tribal tattoos I had down my arms, representing pride, dignity, and decision hadn’t been damaged as bad as I thought from the rope burn. Although it was noticeable, it wasn’t disfiguring. Still, the idea that the skin could’ve ended up scarring had me unnerved. I didn’t want to look down at my arms and be reminded of Ronnie. I’d see her every time I grabbed a beer, drove my car, or had my hand wrist deep into a girl’s pussy.

I let out a growl of discontent, annoyed at the tension building in my body. I needed to go for a hard, fast drive.

I shoved myself off the stool, the creaky thing giving a screech as it tumbled back and fell. I tossed Ronnie’s keys back at Hunter.

He caught them in a single paw and didn’t stop me as I headed to my bike. I slipped my leg over the black Triumph Rocket III Harley and started her up.

“Brother,” Hunter called from his place by the cooler. “Be careful.”

He wasn’t talking about my riding.

He was talking about her.

I pulled down my glasses perched on top of my head and rode out the garage, hopeful my engine would take me as far away from her as I could get. All the while trying to forget the fact she’d been at my back only hours before.

* * *

I didn’t think it could get worse. Honest.

But when Jeremiah called Wolf, who called Hunter, who called me, I realized it had.

And here I was, staring down at the shards of glass scattered across the bathroom’s linoleum floor, wondering if it could even be called a window anymore.

“I was out all last night. When I did get back, I went straight to bed. I didn’t notice it until I went to use the bathroom half an hour ago,” Ronnie said to Jeremiah, our old but eager sheriff, who was writing down notes in a crinkled leather notepad. “I don’t think they took anything—not that I have much anyway.”

“So long as you’re all right.” Jeremiah gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder before casting a look in my direction. He said something else to her before wandering down the path and over to the property where the owner of the motel was currently standing.

“You didn’t have to come,” Ronnie said, pushing her brown hair behind her ear. Her hair was a ruffled mess on the top of her head, corroborating her story. Although it was three in the afternoon, I could tell Ronnie had just woken up, and from the drained look in her eyes, she didn’t seem to be fully functioning yet.

“We get a call from Jeremiah if anything suspicious happens. Prez sent me to check it out,” I mumbled, stepping away from the glass as Ronnie approached me. I was aware she didn’t have anything on her feet and her toes were poking out the bottom of her loose pajama pants. Her nails weren’t painted, and her middle toe stuck out the furthest, reminding me that I used to joke about her toes being universally pissed off at the world.

Ronnie caught me looking at her toes and I could see the nostalgic smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. The same one that had almost got me. But she suppressed it like I had, and we pretended it never happened.

“I see,” Ronnie replied and I almost forgot what I had said to her which wasn’t necessarily a lie. I didn’t come because I was told to. I came because I couldn’t bring myself not to.

I hated it. Despised that part of me that had turned my wheels around and had them heading back from the state line I had almost hit on my drive and coming straight back to this motel.

Back to the very thing I had been trying to forget about.

“Well, I’ll be fine now. I’m being moved to another room. A safer one I hope.” She shrugged, gesturing to the door. “I’ll be at the farm at the same time later today.”

I doubted that there would be a safer room. Not with the only form of protection the old motel had was the fat basset hound laid flat across the owner’s porch, snoring so loudly that the stones on the ground rattled.

“I still have your truck,” I replied, fiddling with the bike key that was in my pockets. I swear I’d done more fiddling with keys this week than I had with girls.

“Then I’ll get the bus.” She shrugged at me, turning to grab the trousers she’d had on last night, which were currently in a pile on the floor, and started digging through them until she pulled out the hair tie from last night.

With expert ease she grabbed handfuls of her wild brown hair and had it up in a messy bun, leaving only tendrils to brush her deeply tanned nape. The afternoon light coming through the window lit her face up with slight jagged lines, and for a moment they looked like scars on her face, but when clouds came over and the light was gone, it was as if I could still see them, sitting there, underneath the surface.

I stopped looking.

“Dammit,” I hissed. I turned toward the black bag on the bed, picked it up and put it over my shoulder, the lightness of it bringing forth too many questions. I walked out the door. “Get changed and meet me outside.”

I heard Ronnie yelling something or other after my exit. I chose to ignore her, favoring to meet up with Jeremiah, who was speaking into his radio scanner.

He stopped as I approached, putting the speaker back through the window of the car as he took one look at me and the bag in my hand and said, “I’ll tell the owner he doesn’t need to set up a new room.”

I gave him a nod and walked back to my bike, making the one phone call to make what I needed happen, then shoved Ronnie’s black bag into my saddle bag. I didn’t usually ride with them, but somehow I knew it’d come down to this. The second I got that phone call that her room had been broken into, I knew.

Boots resounded in my ears as Ronnie walked out the ground-story room, passed the ice machine, and came down the porch steps toward my bike with her pajamas in her hands, wearing the same clothes from yesterday. I could have let her change into fresh clothes from her bag, but I would have spent too much time arguing with her before we got anywhere.

She was coming with me whether she liked it or not. Not that I liked it either. But this way was quicker.

“Why. Where. And why,” she demanded, bundling her pajamas under one arm to prop her hands on her hips.

“You said why twice,” I said, looking down the few inches between us. Ronnie was one of the taller girls that I’d met, even without the boot heels and the bun making her seem taller. It was nice not having to break my neck to look a girl in the eye, like most of the time.

“Then you better answer me twice as fast,” Ronnie retorted, not moving from her spot a few feet from me. She was close, and I got a good look at her. The way her body was now slimmer, and although she didn’t have a lot of curves, there was still a subtle dip around her waist that made her stomach look even longer and flatter as it descended into the waist band of her long jeans. The old worn pair of jeans had seen better days. They came up a little at the heel where her cuff met her boots, but that was just one of the problems she faced being a size four with legs that went on for miles.

A lot of the muscle she’d had back when she was seventeen had been lost, and the simple sight of that told me that she hadn’t been riding as much as she used to.

I saw Ronnie’s skin grow red at the long looks I was giving her. She was quiet, waiting for my reaction to the now grown body of the dorky teenager I used to know.

I didn’t give her one. I didn’t even let myself have one because that was territory I refused to step into to.

“This place isn’t safe. I’m taking you to one where it is safe. Happy?” I replied.

“No,” she scoffed, as if her answer wasn’t clear as day. One look at her was all I needed; her hands moving from her hips to across her small chest, her heel beginning to tap on the ground; it was obvious.

“Just get on, Ronnie.” I turned back to my bike, not wanting to argue anymore, and dropped onto my Harley. My legs stood comfortably on either side, waiting to kick up the stand as Ronnie refused to move.

The heat was scorching. Summer was bearing down on Fellpeak and the motel provided no shadows. My leather was beginning to get bleached under the light and my skin was starting to burn. My white shirt did nothing to help my arms either, but I wasn’t about to take my cut off when riding through my town. Not a chance.

“Where are we going?” Ronnie persisted, green eyes squinting in the sunlight as she fought not to break the hold she had on my chest to shield her eyes. She was a Texan girl, through and through, both against the sunlight and the stubborn streak that reached down into her bones.

It had pissed me off when we were kids. Looked like it still did.

“Why do you have to know?” I retorted.

“Because I’m the one going there.” Ronnie pouted. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because you’re wasting time. Now shut your mouth, sit the fuck down, and hold on before I leave without you.”

“You could be throwing me off a cliff for all I know,” she growled, stomping her foot on the ground. “And don’t speak to me like that!”

I could see she was getting more and more riled up, her boots kicking at the concrete, scuffing the already wrecked leather. I couldn’t do anything about it, however, because I kept meeting her level with each reply. We were getting louder and louder, and neither one of us looked like we were going to stop.

“I’m tempted,” I replied, honestly. This was one of the many times I’d honestly been tempted to chuck her off a nearby cliff just to shut her off. “You want a repeat of your sixteenth summer?”

“You bastard! I knew that was you!” She hissed. “You tied me to a fucking tree while I was sleeping! I didn’t even get to go to my own birthday party!”

“That wasn’t your birthday party. It was mine, and you were being annoying because I didn’t invite you.”

“It was both of our birthdays!” Ronnie tossed her pajamas at me, the cotton hitting me square in the face before falling to my lap.

“No, it was my birthday. I was born a whole four years before you, which makes it mine.”

“That doesn’t count!” Ronnie threw down her hands and stomped her foot.

She winced for a split second and I wondered just how hard she’d thrown down that leg.

“It does. Now get on.” I hadn’t really raised my voice as much as Ronnie had. I quickly realized we were gathering attention; attention that we really didn’t need in a town with a population of six hundred. It prompted me to put her pajamas in my saddle bag and pull out her helmet—

The helmet. The. Not her helmet.

Ronnie looked like she wanted to argue with me, but I saw the moment she heard a few of the tenants of the motel begin whispering from the balcony above. If I remembered anything from high school, I knew Ronnie detested gossip.

As the memory passed through my mind, she snatched the helmet out of my hands, tugged out her bun with force that I’m sure hurt her, and put the helmet on over her head.

I braced my foot against the ground as Ronnie all but dropped down onto the bike, making the thing bounce slightly as her pussy came to grind against my back. The heat between us reappeared in an instant and if Ronnie’s stillness and sudden quietness was anything to go by, she noticed it as well.

I was trying not to remember or acknowledge anything about the ride home I gave her last night. I had been pissed off and having her pussy riding against my back and her breasts pressed against my leather cut only made it worst. Speeding up, which scared the absolute shit out of her, had somehow been a vindictive revenge; punishing her for making me touch all the parts of her that separated the seventeen-year old girl of my past and the sexy, all-woman rubbing up and down behind me.

I squeezed the throttle, the bike giving a tremendous roar that had the attention of every single tenant within a five-mile radius, and kicked off my stand.

This was a bad idea. I knew it. She knew it. Fuck, I’m sure even Hunter had already known it when he warned me yesterday.

But I did it anyway.

Just like every bad idea I had.